|
|
|
|
|
Gone But Not Forgotten (Unfortunately) Gary Braver is a hypochondriac’s worst nightmare… probably literally. He supplements his living writing medical thrillers, and his latest will have you ruminating on every minor space-out. The topic is Alzheimer’s Disease and a remarkable new drug that reverses its effects – but lest you think the Northeastern University English professor has developed a sudden streak of optimism, rest assured the benefits pale in comparison with the side effects. Braver traded e-mails with us about Flashback, which has baby boomers popping their Xanax like Junior Mints.
Flashback
GB: I'm a baby boomer. And before I begin to bump down the staircase, I thought I should write a book on the subject. Also, my publisher has contracted me to continue giving them "high concept" biomedical thrillers. (This is my 6th novel and 4th medical thriller.) My novels essentially are cautionary tales whose moral message is ‘Watch out what you wish for.” Each is about tampering with human biology for presumed benefits—free lunches. Three books back, Elixir, is about the development of an anti-aging drug. The next one, Gray Matter, is about a surgical procedure that boosts the intelligence of “slow” children, turning them into geniuses. So a book about the development of a cure for Alzheimer's Disease (and one that works too well) seemed like a topic to appeal to a wide readership, given how we’re living in an ever-aging world where Alzheimer’s disease is proportionally on the rise (some 5 million cases in the US) . Unfortunately, I became intimately familiar with the subject when a favorite aunt of mine succumbed to the disease a few years ago. The idea hit me one day when visiting her in a nursing home. At the time the disease had reduced her to a babbling bed-ridden creature attached to tubes. But while sitting with her alone one day, she suddenly began to speak baby talk and had lapsed into Armenian phrases. What sent chills through me was that she was talking to her mother who had died when she was 4 years old. In her mind she was back nearly 80 years. It was an astounding moment, and when my head cleared I had my “What If.” What if some hotshot pharmaceutical company had developed an actual cure for AD? I imagined a drug that worked too well, causing people to relive deep past experiences, which gave me the opportunity to create some potentially dramatic scenes, flashbacks. A_P: What’s the process for researching a medical thriller like Flashback? Do you have help, or do you do the research on your own? GB: I do all my own research. Research for me is an ongoing process. The first thing I do is to determine if the science at the heart of the tale will work--or if I can fudge it with pseudo-scientific rationales. The first step for Flashback led me to the Internet discovery that the saliva from the Gila monster--the only poisonous lizard on the planet--had proved beneficial in the treatment of AD. I had read that toxins of sea creatures also had neurotropic properties that were beneficial in the treatment of human ailments. And we have jellyfish in New England waters. And instantly I envisioned the opening scene of a guy getting caught in a plume of rare and toxic jellies. And I was off. A_P: Are there any drugs like Memorine in trials that you know of? GB: No, and probably won’t be since the neurological damage inflicted by AD appears to be irreversible. A_P: You’re a full-time professor at Northeastern University, a large, well-renown private university in Boston. Does being a professor help or hinder the writing process? Do you write daily or in spurts during semester breaks? GB: It helps for several reasons: 1) I teach great courses—Modern Bestsellers, Detective Fiction, Horror Fiction, and Science Fiction as well as a grad course in fiction writing. So I’m reading the kinds of books I like and write as well as teaching the craft. The best way to learn how to write is learning how to read. I look at another author’s work the way a carpenter looks at a house. I study how their books are structured, how they get in and out of scenes, how their characters are fleshed out. 2) I teach 7 hours a week and have 5 months off a year. Few other day jobs afford so much time to write. 3) I cannot write in hour blocks such as between classes. So I have engineered my schedule so that I have days off to devote solely to my writing. Both my sons are now out of the house; so, aside from social engagements, I write in most of my spare time, from 5AM until I crash at night.. A_P: You give Northeastern and some other popular New England landmarks some nods in the book. Does setting the story locally make the writing process easier for you? What is your motive for using a real setting as opposed to a completely fictional one? GB: I try to write about places that have dramatic potential. Also about places I know. And because readers know places, there is an advantage of knowing a locale well so you don’t screw up which way traffic flows on a particular street. Also, readers like to see places they know in books. But I also use fictional locales based on real ones. The protagonists in my last four novels and the one I’m completing now live in a town I call Carleton, MA, which is based on where I live, Arlington, a relatively small suburban town 10 miles outside of Boston. I use the particular features I need from different real towns and create an amalgam. A_P: Similarly, the protagonist in Flashback is Armenian, and you’re Armenian as well; is Jack Koryan a tribute to anyone in particular? GB: No, just to my Armenian-ness. There are so few Armenian-American commercial novelists in America, and fewer still Armenian-American protagonists. So, I’m trying to toot the tribal horn. A_P: The concept of restoring memory to an astounding degree, like your fictional drug Memorine could do, creates some interesting moral implications. What have you learned, through researching this novel, about memory loss – or repression – as they pertain to a person’s psychological health? GB: I have learned to be thankful that we humans were born with the remarkable gift of forgetfulness. Thankfully, we are not barraged with all the minutia we experience each day—all the years of brushing our teeth, driving to work, all the commercials we’ve seen on television, etc. However, Flashback deals with a small but significant percentage people who’ve used Memorine and relive experiences they had from their deep past—some of which are blissful nostalgic trips, others horrific traumas. My research exposed me to post-traumatic stress syndrome, the course of people who’ve lived through brutal experiences including child abuse and war. Repression of such is a good thing. The plague of such is horrible and leads to addictions and suicide. So, selective forgetting can be a blessing. A_P: Given the choice, would you prefer to remember everything you have done and everything you’ve ever thought, or are you happy with our human ability to fade events over time? GB: Like ignorance, sometimes forgetfulness is bliss. |
 |
|
